


slipping through my fingers (all the time)

by AngelicGrace



Series: the pain of it [3]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: 4x22, Gen, Post-Season/Series 04 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 01:52:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11003526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelicGrace/pseuds/AngelicGrace
Summary: Immediately following the events of 4x22, Gina shows up at Karen Peralta's doorstep.





	slipping through my fingers (all the time)

**Author's Note:**

> God, that finale absolutely broke me, I've been crying for the last few days, so this is what came out of it.  
> Title is from ABBA's "Slipping Through My Fingers"

The doorbell rings (and rings and rings). Karen Peralta closes her eyes, and lets it continue. The ringing grows more frantic, picking up in pace, until the person at the door gives up, resorting to pounding their fists on the wood.

Karen has lived through a divorce and a breakup with the father of her son; she has spent weeks at a time working night shifts and living on three hours of sleep a night, eyes ringed with dark circles, but this is the hardest it’s ever been for her to push herself out of her chair and walk to the door.

A key turns in the lock as Karen reaches the door, and she thinks that it’s Jake for a split-second, before the memory hits her all over again (the woman in the jury’s voice echoing, _guilty, guilty, guilty,_ and Jake’s face pinched and broken and lost) and she’s nearly doubled over.

Arms encircle Karen’s shoulders, and she looks up to see Gina, with her courtroom clothes and red-rimmed eyes. She looks young and scared, but she holds Karen tightly, stroking her hair. (Karen vividly recalls the six-year old girl who’d sneak in through the back door on the nights her parents were fighting, the ten-year-old who’d let Karen hug her because she was too emotionally wrung out to squirm free, the teenager who’d steal Karen’s makeup wipes to scrape off her tear-streaked mascara before falling asleep next to Jake on the couch.)

Gina’s grown now, and as fierce in her love as she’s always been. She guides Karen to the couch, and they sink into it, leaning into one another.

Karen tries to whisper, “He,” before her throat closes up and she’s crying into Gina’s shoulder the way Gina used to cry into hers, and she feels shattered and weak and useless.

“I _know_ ,” Gina says into her hair.

“He didn’t do it,” Karen finally chokes out. “He wouldn’t –”

This is her boy, who watched Die Hard so many times that he decided to be a cop, whose smile split his face when he was made detective, who loves his job more than almost anything in the world (except maybe the cops he works with).

“He didn’t,” Gina confirms (as if Karen needed confirmation). “Him and Rosa,” Gina’s voice wobbles on Rosa’s name, and Karen suddenly remembers that Gina’s lost two people who are important to her, not just Jake. Gina clears her throat, blinking. “Jake and Rosa were set up.”

Karen looks up at her, and Gina’s bottom lip is trembling. She gets up, suddenly. “I’m going to make some tea, I know you have some of that lame chai crap,” Karen, who knows full well that Gina adores chai, lets herself be pulled to the kitchen, and the smell of spices and the sound of the kettle boiling soon fills the room. As she mixes the tea, Gina avoids Karen’s eye and continues softly, “they were going undercover to take down Hawkins, but she got them first.”

“Hawkins?” Karen croaks, confused. She remembers Jake telling her stories about hero-cop Melanie Hawkins, who he’d once described as “like Die Hard, but better.”

“She’s dirty,” Gina says, cracking a bitter smile.

Karen feels a pang in her chest, that Jake had to go through this, had to be disappointed by every role model he’s had—

“Hey,” Gina says sharply, like she’s reading Karen’s thoughts. “You’ve never disappointed him, Mom. He loves you,”

Karen doesn’t really remember what happens next, but when she comes to, she’s making awful noises in the back of her throat, and she’s curled up on the floor like a toddler.

(She hasn’t cried like this since she was a kid, without abandon, involuntary sobs racking her chest. But what’s the goddamn point, she thinks, if she can’t cry on the night her only son has been sentenced to fifteen years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit)

Gina’s sitting next to her on the linoleum, shoulder pressed against hers, and she presses a mug of chai into Karen’s hand.

“We’re going to get him back,” she promises. “No one at the nine-nine will stop working until we get him and Rosa back.” Her mascara is streaking down her cheeks, but she’s laser-focused, smiling a jagged smile that's sharp enough to cut down Melanie Hawkins’s entire career, and her eyes bore into Karen’s with so much fierceness that she needs to look away. “We’ll get them back,” she says again. Karen isn’t sure who she’s trying to convince anymore, but she finds Gina’s hand and squeezes it tightly.

“We’ll get him back,” Karen repeats (and for a split second, she lets herself believe it).

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> come cry abt b99 w me, i'm stcvierogers on tumblr


End file.
